1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates generally to machine translation and more specifically to providing a customizable machine translation service.
2. Description of the Related Art
Machine translation techniques, including translation memories, statistical machine translation, linguistic models, and the like, typically require a training corpus or other pre-translated materials on which to base translations. This data set is typically very large and based on generic documents. Further, due to the size of the data set required, the translations typically reflect generic word usage or word usage in commonly-translated domains such as news, government documents, and the like.
Currently, online machine translation services are mostly generic (i.e., they are meant to translate texts in any given domain). For example, SDL, a provider of translation services, offers an online translation service at www.FreeTranslation.com. At this website, a user can enter an input text string in a source language and specify a target language. The translation service will translate the input text string into the specified target language and display an output string. However, this service and other similar services are not equipped to manage and exploit specialized translations.
Some translation memories are available online. For example, Wordfast provides a Very Large Translation Memory (VLTM) that can be accessed using a client. However, this project requires users to donate translation memories in order to expand. Further, domains are not separated from one another within the translation memory. Lingotek offers an online language search engine onto which users may upload translated content and later search for segments of the translated content.
Specialized translations typically include translations of documents generated by a niche or specialty. Technical documents generated within a niche often require specialized translations that require a translation engine to be trained on a specialized training set. For example, an automotive manufacturer may require translations of documents that use otherwise generic words in an atypical manner. An information technology supplier may use the same words in yet another manner. As such, there is a need for a translation service capable of being tuned/trained to a specialty/niche and equipped to manage and exploit specialized translations.